I typically only provide Site Care for websites that I've designed. Right now, for a limited time, I'm opening it up to allow new clients to migrate to Mindmeld Creative Site Care.

Before we migrate your site, I'll need to perform a site audit to see if everything is up-to-date, plugins are still supported by their developers, and there are no major security holes. There's a one-time fee for the site audit.

If repairs need to be completed before we can migrate your site, I'll send a proposal for the cost of those repairs.

Once we've migrated your site, you can we'll update the domain settings with your registrar. There is typically zero downtime for your website during the transition. 

All Site Care clients also get hourly assistance at a discounted rate for requests that will take longer than 15 minutes. Don't worry though. I'll send you an estimate and get your approval before starting. You'll never get a surprise invoice from me!

If you consistently need more than quick answers each month, additional webmaster hours are available in 2 and 4 hour increments. 

Webmaster Services are available for clients who need someone to consistently maintain and update the content of their site. 

You can also use Webmaster time to ask me to troubleshoot something, editing existing content, create new pages, or add new functionality to your site. 

But it goes far beyond even that, as your Webmaster, I can create  automations using Zapier & Make, I can build sales funnels integrating your sales pages with Mailchimp, I can integrate your website forms with Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and through your CRM, I can create automated business processes that save you time while making sure none of your clients fall through the cracks. The possibilities are practically endless. 

Sure, each of these tasks can be done as a separate project, with the whole proposal, deposit, payment, launch process. But, that means waiting for a space in my project calendar and it means paying my standard rates. As your Webmaster, I'm always available for the time you've contracted, and you'll get the best possible rate.

Note: Webmaster time is not retained time. These hours expire at the end of each month. 

I do offer retainers, but they require a delicate balance of my time to avoid bottlenecks and overwhelm. I only offer retainers to select clients who have nurtured a relationship with Mindmeld Creative. If you'd like to retain monthly time, please contact me to talk about that possibility.

Once you've paid for your website in full, it's yours. You can move it to another host if you want.

Please get in touch if you're considering migrating your website to your own hosting account. I can clarify what that means for your continued costs (premium themes, plugins, etc) and recommend a few hosting services that I trust implicitly. 

No. Mindmeld Creative does not host email accounts.

I recommend setting up your @yourwebsite.com email addresses with your registrar's webmail service (my opinion: Namecheap is the best). Another great option is to use an email service like G-Suite from Google or Rackspace Email Hosting.  For most small businesses and organizations, this will be $2 - $5 per month. 

All of those services make the process fairly straightforward if you follow the steps they've provided.  

When we audit you're site, generally we'll be looking for answers to the following questions. (You aren't expected to know what all of this stuff means. It's our job to find these answers.)

Themes

1. When was your last theme updated?
2. Is the theme no longer supported?
3. Do you have a child theme activated for your website customizations (hopefully)?
4. Have you deleted unused themes?

Backups

1. When was a backup of your website last performed?
2. Is the backup saved in an external location?
3. Did your backup include a complete copy of your website including the theme files, database, plugins and uploads?
4. Is your backup happening automatically?

Plugins

1. Are your plugins up to date & stable?
2. Have you deactivated and deleted unnecessary/unused plugins?
3. Do you have any inactive plugins?
4. Is your site dependent on plugins that are no longer supported or updated?

Spam

1. Do you have an anti-spam filter installed on your site?
2. Do you have a system in place to review, approve or delete comments on your website?

Speed

1. Have you compressed images on your website and deleted unused images from your media gallery to assist with speed issues?
2. Are there any errors causing your site to load slowly or not at all?

WordPress Core Files

1. Are you on the current version of WordPress?

Security

1. Do you or any user accounts with “admin” as the username?
2. Do your user accounts use secure passwords?
3. Do you have “Anyone Can Subscribe” disabled?
4. Have you scanned your website for security issues?
5. Does your website limit login attempts?

Crawl errors

1. Do you have a system to check for crawl errors?
2. Do you have a custom 404 page for bad links?